Energy storage power plants serve primarily to meet the demand for peak loads of electrical energy at periods of high consumption. Moreover, energy storage power plants are essential for providing balancing power to regulate power grids.
In this case, electrical energy is stored in periods of low consumption of electrical energy and output, after a certain delay, when the demand for power is high. For technical reasons, conventional power plants are usually not capable of reacting sufficiently quickly to fluctuations in consumption in the electricity power grid, or of supplying large amounts of power for a short period. In order to be able to accommodate such fluctuations in consumption, energy storage power plants are employed which are also capable of delivering large amounts of electrical power for a relatively short period of time.
Energy storage power plants known from the prior art are differentiated primarily by the manner in which the electrical energy is temporarily stored. The best known type of energy storage power plants are water storage power plants and pumped storage power plants which, at periods of low consumption, pump water into a reservoir where its level relative to the earth's surface gives the water contained therein increased potential energy. Other types of energy storage power plants do not store the electrical energy occurring as potential energy but instead as chemical or physical energy, for example in the form of heat or compressed air.
Many of these types of energy storage power plants are subject to geological or structural constraints so that where they are provided is often dependent on location. In addition, these technologies sometimes also entail high implementation costs which often undermine profitability. A further disadvantage of the energy storage power plants known from the prior art can be seen in the fact that the power output is often too low or cannot be output for sufficiently long periods of time.